Introduction

Throughout this plan, we shall be engaging with the book of Amos, and we will be looking at different media, helping you to get to the heart of this unique minor prophet.

I’m going to start by describing the sort of situation Amos spoke into.

In October 2022, Bristol Cathedral hosted an exhibition of a particularly ugly feature of this city’s history – those who had made fortunes from slave-trading in the Atlantic Slave trade.

But what makes this story especially shocking is that a whole number of these slave-traders are buried in Bristol Cathedral. You can visit today and see their tombs.

On Sunday, these wealthy men worshipped God, and for the rest of the week, they traded human beings!

Amos, a man who didn’t even consider himself to be a prophet, was driven by the Spirit of God to address something remarkably similar in the town of Bethel, the sanctuary in the northern kingdom of Israel where the Lord was worshipped on the Sabbath by men and women who then economically enslaved and abused the poor for the rest of the week.

Amos 8:4-6 "Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying ‘When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat? – skimping on the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy with a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.’ The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: ‘I will never forget anything they have done." (NIV)